If you don't need OS 9 compatibility, you're probably better off using the UNIX compression/decompression programs (gzip, gunzip, zip, unzip) since those come with the operating system and would probably work more transparently than Stuffit.

Check out this. You need a license to use the StuffIt Engine with your program. I can't tell from their blurb whether they want you to pay for it - maybe they bill you according to how commercial you are.

Why don't you just use compressed image and audio formats? However, if you really want to keep everything in an archive, maybe you should look at something like zlib.

Using Stuffit is probably not a good idea. Mostly because of compatibility issues. You may not know whether the user has the most recent version of Stuffit, but most importantly some newer versions of Stuffit can't open older formats. In fact, lately, Stuffit has been seriously screwing up my archives, so I'd go with the other suggested formats.

Also, Stuffit (and gzip) is a general-purpose compressor. You can get much better compression by using different libraries designed for different tasks, like PNG or even JPEG graphics, or mp3 audio (expanded to AIFF or whatever on load).

I got around paying for the stuffit engine license by using Binhex (.hqx) instead. The compression isn't quite as good as .sit, but there's free domain code on the web for compressing/decompressing binhex files.

Binhex isn't supposed to be used as a compression format! It does perform some simple run-length compression, but it's primary purpose is as an encoding format for passing 8 bit data through a 7 bit medium. It has a diabolical compression ratio, and it'll probably make the data bigger if it's already compressed!

Quote:Originally posted by NCarter However, if you really want to keep everything in an archive, maybe you should look at something like zlib.

I'd like to second that. You can use zlib and things will be just fine. For example, Quake 3 pk3 files (they contain all the non-executable assets) are simply zip files with a different extension. zlib is a painless API to work with.

Quote:Originally posted by Brad Oliver I'd like to second that. You can use zlib and things will be just fine. For example, Quake 3 pk3 files (they contain all the non-executable assets) are simply zip files with a different extension. zlib is a painless API to work with.

One thing you might want to look into is PhysicsFS ( http://www.icculus.org/physfs/ ), which allows you to store the files and such in one big file like quake, and have compression on the file... better yet, just go to the homepage and read the explanation there, it's much better than my ramblings.